Our First BIG Step

If you are one of my ten followers ;), you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in quite a while. This is mostly because we have been super busy and partially because I wanted to wait until we had some actual news. SO, the fact that I'm posting means...we have some news!! We have officially selected our country and our agency!!! Though I think it's ironic that we actually made a decision on our official last day of summer, I'm sure it is all in God's timing and that it will be very evident as to why it took us so long in the near future. :)

So, here's how it went down. As many of you know, we have been thinking and praying about international adoption since the beginning of last November (that's right, 9 months!!) and thought we were pretty sold on the mission in Taiwan. However, since the beginning of the summer, there has been a stirring and some occurances that have caused us to look elsewhere (see my "Adoption is a Journey" post) and have drawn us to Africa. We initally thought maybe Ghana was the place for us, but, as of last Monday, realize that our baby/babies are in Ethiopia.

We met with two adoptive mothers here in town who have adopted from Ethiopia this Monday. From there, we began to really feel a stirring in our hearts and all day on Monday, we researched and prayed and researched and prayed. We both had a hard time sleeping on Monday night and when we woke up, we were both confident that Ethiopia was the country!! So, we have spent the week researching, E-mailing, calling, and messaging members of groups to find the best adoption agency for us and made the decision tonight (Friday, July 30th) that we are applying to adopt through Children's Hope International: http://www.childrenshope.net/. We have the application filled out and Trev just went and printed our pictures to send with it. Tomorrow we will make copies and get it in the mail so that CHI will (hopefully) receive it Monday!

One thing is that we will be requesting siblings. Since C is so young and we want to keep the kids in birth order, it will be a miracle if we will be able to adopt siblings. If you are praying for us, please pray that this will work out as is God's will and that we will be wise to His direction in this!

Since we are working with an agency, our costs are significantly greater, so we will be doing some major fund raising. Currently, the federal government gives significant tax credits for adoptions, but even this will not cover our costs. Our hope is that we will raise enough money and then receive enough in tax credits that we will be able to bless another adoptive family when our adoption is complete.

There will be so much more to come...thank you all for your prayers and support thus far and in the long process to come! :)

Trevor and Jen